Various types of tape printing apparatuses have been conventionally proposed for producing a tape with characters printed thereon. Generally, a tape cassette to be used in a tape printing apparatus has a cassette case comprising a ribbon spool onto which an ink ribbon is wound, a film tape spool onto which a film tape serving as a printing medium is wound, and an adhesive tape spool onto which an adhesive tape is wound. In the above-described tape cassette, characters and the like are printed on the film tape using a thermal head provided in the tape printing apparatus, through the ink ribbon, while the ink ribbon and the film tape are being conveyed, to thereby produce a tape with characters printed thereon.
In general, to improve the scratch resistance of the characters and the like formed on the film after the printing operation in the tape printing apparatus, an adhesive tape is pasted on the character printed surface of the post-printing film tape by means of a pasting roller or the like, after which the tape is cut.
In another tape printer, an adhesive tape is pasted on the character printed surface to thereby protect the printed surface of the printing tape.
However, since the adhesive tape needs to be pasted on the character printed surface of the film tape after the characters and the like have been printed thereon, the adhesive tape spool onto which the adhesive tape is wound and the pasting roller must be accommodated in the tape cassette used in the conventional tape printing apparatus.
As a result, the size of the tape cassette becomes larger, thereby causing a problem that the overall size of the printing apparatus must inevitably be made larger to allow for installation of a cassette mounting unit. Further, since the pasting roller provided inside the tape cassette is configured so as to be arranged between the thermal head and the cutting mechanism provided in the tape printing apparatus, the thermal head is inevitably arranged far away from the cutting mechanism. As a result, a front blank space (blank space portion corresponding to the distance between a cutting position of the printing tape and the thermal head of the tape printing apparatus) of the produced printing tape becomes large. Therefore, it has been desired to narrow a blank space portion.
On the other hand, since the printing mechanism and the cutting mechanism are not arranged adjacent to each other, blank space portion of the front edge side of the produced printing tape becomes large in another tape printing apparatus as mentioned above. For using the printing tape economically, it has been desired to narrow such a blank space.